


Danger

by rosegardeninwinter



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-10
Updated: 2018-09-10
Packaged: 2019-07-10 14:09:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15950948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosegardeninwinter/pseuds/rosegardeninwinter
Summary: "When he is younger, Haymitch is conflicted about love."Haymitch does his best not to become a father figure, does not succeed.





	Danger

When he is younger, Haymitch is conflicted about love.  


On the one hand, he is certain that he loves his Ma and baby brother, but he is equally certain that love is a dangerous thing. Hot stoves are dangerous things and he knows this because he burned his hand on one and he cried. Ma sometimes cries too, when she’s alone washing clothes, and since he knows that soap and lye aren’t dangerous like stoves and since he also knows that other kids have fathers and he doesn’t, he starts to suspect that the reason Ma cries does not have to do with laundry at all, but with love. Which means love must hurt. Which means it is dangerous.  


Which means he must avoid it.  


Except for Ma and baby brother. He can love them.  


When he turns fourteen, he adds Poppy to the list of people he can love too. She’s taller than he is, and she has a face full of freckles and a gap between her front teeth, and she’s the loudest, bravest girl he’s ever met. Her mother makes the most mouthwatering porridge—with real honey when she can get it—and they share a tin under the spreading oak outside the school. One day, Poppy shows him how she steals buttons and thimbles from vendors at the Hob. It’s not what his Ma would approve of (“only children without homes steal, Haymitch,” she’d say, “and you have a home”) but he likes Poppy more for it. She ties a faded kerchief around her neck as they trudge by the east mine entrance, gives it a twist at the end, flashes him that childish smile. As the miners end their shift for the day and emerge from the ground, she kisses him.  


When he is sixteen, he sits on the edge of his bed in the train compartment and pictures paper in his mind. A nice sheet of merchant class paper and smelly black ink. He writes the names of the people he can love.  


Ma.  


Baby brother.  


Poppy.  


Then he crosses them out, one by one, crams the list in his mind’s pocket. There is no room for love in the arena.  


When he is sixteen and about a hundred years older, there is a crown on his head and a pump in his stomach and spotlights in his face. He doesn’t listen to much of what Caesar is saying. Oh he answers, obviously, but his mind is elsewhere, unfurling the list from its pocket, looking at the crumpled names written there for the first time in weeks. He writes them over again with a charcoal pencil.  


Ma.  


Baby brother.  


Poppy.  


All dead within a week of his victory. He takes a wad of credits and buys as much white liquor as a milk crate can carry. He opens the cabinet under the sink, slumps back against the pipes, and drinks until he can’t pick up the bottles anymore.  


He hates himself afterwards, throws the alcohol in the trash and promises his mother’s memory that he won’t do it again. He sobers up over toast and porridge with too much honey and resolves to get the next batch of tributes home.  


And resolves to get the next batch of tributes home.  


And resolves to get the next batch of tributes home.  


And the next.  


And the next.  


And the —  


He buys as much whiskey as a wheelbarrow will carry, sits in his bathtub and turns the water to full blast, so that when he inevitably throws up, it’ll all go down the drain. He apologizes to his mother’s memory, but he doesn’t sober up. Sobering up means going into the arena to die. And yes, that’s what he’s letting his tributes do. And fine, maybe it’s unforgivably selfish. But he’ll be damned before they drag him back there with them. He’ll be worse than damned if they do.  


He knows it’s bad for his liver, but he convinces himself he doesn’t care. He can’t care. Caring is too close to loving and love is dangerous like hot stoves and dangerous like thinking you’ll ever be allowed to be okay.  


(Not here. No more.)  


Sometimes, when he is thirty-nine, when he is dry enough to have nightmares, he has nightmares of Maysilee’s death. Of the birds, small and harmless, that skewered her throat open at the first opportunity. Love is like those birds. He hates love.  


When he is forty-one, the sun is way too bright and he’s way too hammered to see straight. There’s a blob of pink in his periphery and vaguely he’s aware of voices, and of the concrete when he pitches onto it, face first. He’s out of the sunlight when he gets to his feet, but he’s also way too hammered to walk straight. That pump in his stomach has long since exhausted its use. He’s pretty sure it’s just slushing around in there at this point, rocking with the movement of the train car.  


Rocking and slushing and pumping and slushing and rocking and —  


He comes to in a shower and he wonders for a moment if he’s even left his house. This is where he’d plop himself down when he remembered to. If he throws up, it’ll just go right down the drain, remember?  


He’s not at home though, because as soon as he’s sober enough to walk around, he discovers there are kids here. He’s gotta do something about these kids. Be a mentor or whatever.  


The girl is dark like him, fidgety and small. The boy has apple cheeks, looks completely harmless.  


Small and harmless. They won’t last the first night.  


Small and harmless. In retrospect, he should have known. He wasn’t expecting them to tear his heart from his chest, make it bleed until it started to beat again, but they did — and it scares him so much he can’t breathe. He sets down his glass and gets them sponsors. He brings them both home. He picks up his glass again because he doesn’t really bring them home. He didn’t even bring himself home. It’s the second time in his life that realization has hit him like it does. He tries to do what he did before, to drown away the caring.  


It doesn’t work.  


It doesn’t work, Sweetheart’s plan. To keep the Kid out of the Quell. It doesn’t work, Plutarch’s plan. To airlift everyone from the jungle. It doesn’t work, Coin’s plan. To reunite the opposite sides of the war in a hospital wing at midnight.  


The good news is, it didn’t work, Snow’s plan. To break the Kid in order to break Sweetheart in order to break them all.  


It didn’t work, Haymitch’s plan, avoiding love at all costs. Ma told him once what it was like to hold him when he was born. (“I fell head over heels, Haymitch,” she’d say. “Head over heels in love with my baby boy. It sounds silly, doesn’t it?”)  


They’re better than he is. Their love isn’t stuffed away next to crumbs and lint in a pocket. It’s written all over each other.  


When he’s forty-three, he’s watching them set the table for lunch and he chuckles to see Sweetheart smudged all over with _Peeta, Peeta, Peeta_ and the Kid scrawled all over with _Katniss, Katniss, Katniss._  


He wonders if Poppy would have wanted kids. She would have been a natural at it if she did. He didn’t want kids. He wouldn’t have been a natural at it, not at all. He wonders if she’d laugh to see him now. He doesn’t have to wonder. He knows she would. He can hear it in his head, and that’s some kind of victory.  


Not victory. Victory is a hollow, pathetic word. But it’s something. Something like healing. Something sentimental like that.  


“Do you want carrots?” Sweetheart asks and she rolls her eyes fondly in the direction of the Kid. “There’s honey on them. We’re in an experimental mood today, apparently.”  


Haymitch gives a short bark of amusement. “That right? Well, just make sure to close the damn windows if that mood carries on into the evening.”  


Sweetheart’s scowl brings a grin to Haymitch’s face. The Kid’s oblivious as he sets down a loaf of pumpernickel, humming a song, earnest and very out of tune.  


“That’s lunch,” he proclaims and Sweetheart softens.  


Light rain has started to fall outside as they dig in to the hearty soup and bread and carrots. The cat is manhandling a yarn ball nearby. There are cookies in the oven. Sweetheart murmurs something about working on the book once the dishes are done. (Last time they were working on Hennie Carne, 12’s hundred and fourth tribute.) The Kid nods and mentions watercolors and getting Hennie’s hair just right.  


Haymitch’s mind is elsewhere, rummaging deep in its pocket for a long lost piece of paper, stained with liquor. The old names are there, but faded.  


Ma.  


Baby brother.  


Poppy.  


He lets them stay faded. Faded is okay. It’s hard to love ghosts.  


Instead, he gets out his charcoal pencil again.

_My kids._

They made an entire country love them once.  


One old drunk never stood a chance.


End file.
